The case of an adult Boy Scout leader in New Jersey’s Monmouth Council, now before the Supreme Court, interests me more than usual both because of my debt to scouting and involvement in this particular council.

Monday, May 08, 2000

The case of an adult Boy Scout leader in New Jersey’s Monmouth Council, now before the Supreme Court, interests me more than usual both because of my debt to scouting and involvement in this particular council. The court must decide whether to overrule the decision of a state Supreme Court that found BSA guilty of illegal discrimination against gays on the basis that Scouting is a "public accommodation." The Supreme Court that has ruled such a government unit as the armed forces may discriminate concerning gays and lesbians cannot logically rule differently about a private youth organization like the Boy Scouts of America and, to do so, would open the door to government intrusion into almost all private societies.

My father as a youth was a member of Dan Beard’s Boys, the American predecessor to the British Boy Scouts and became a Scout upon BSA’s 1910 founding. Dad was my first scoutmaster in our church’s troop. I rose through the ranks from Tenderfoot to Eagle Scout and, in senior scouting, Sea Scout Quartermaster and Explorer Ranger. I progressed in leadership positions from assistant patrol leader through junior assistant scoutmaster. After college, I became one of my father’s successors as scoutmaster. I reviewed this career and described how very much I owe to scouting at an adult awards banquet of the Monmouth County Council, held in Ocean Grove.

As a Scout I learned and subscribed to the Scout Oath; as a leader I taught it and sought to exemplify it: "On my honor I will do my best: to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Not so incidentally, I wrote this, which I learned 58 years ago, before confirming it with my prized copy of Handbook for Boys. I got the words exact, inaccurate only on punctuation.

The 11th of the 12 points of this Scout Law is "A scout is clean." The exposition stipulates: "He keeps clean in body and thought, stands for clean speech, clean sport, clean habits and travels with a clean crowd."

Now, can a man who engages in homosexual behavior be an effective Scout leader? Will he necessarily be harmful to Scouting programs? Theoretically, he might be effective; not necessarily harmful, but very possibly. I would much prefer that every individual have the opportunity to demonstrate his suitability and not be excluded simply because he is gay.

The Monmouth Council seems to have concluded James Dale, in fact, demonstrated by his very public leadership of gay and lesbian political actions in college that he is not suitable. He has chosen, it feels, gay identification and associations over those of Scouting. His interest has not been to make himself suitable for Scouting but to force Scouting to make itself suitable to him.

In this he gained the support of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and now he (and the large number of special-interest groups that fund his efforts) expects the federal court to invade a private organization with political correctness and compromise its very nature.

The state court ruled that because BSA accepts all boys for membership and publicly invites them, this constitutes its being "a public accommodation" that falls under state anti-discrimination laws. The price it may yet pay for being inclusive, then, is that it may not set its own membership requirements.

Many gays are compassionate and sensitive and more so than some present Scouters. These meet all Scouting’s moral expectations except this. The word "straight" in the Scout Oath must be recognized as having a different sense from "straight" as over against "gay," and many have every intention of being morally clean. The conflict comes in what this includes.

BSA would do well to examine closely the sense in which homosexuals could not and those under which they could serve as leaders. Its officials need to rethink their position conceptually, but they are preoccupied with defending it legally.

More than Scouting is at risk here. New Jersey’s reasoning fits almost every private society other than secret fraternities or Posse Comitatus. Most especially, churches could become liable. Those churches most strongly convinced that homosexuality is proscribed by the Bible tend to be the most active in evangelism. Their very reaching out could become the cause of their biblical convictions being disallowed.

Perhaps the Boy Scouts of America should accommodate to gays, but it must be its decision. Government has no business intruding with a heavy hand into the internal affairs of private organizations, whether Scouting or churches.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays